The series tells the story of an Akita Inu pup called Gin (Japanese for "silver") who leaves his master, a young boy named Daisuke, to join a pack of wild dogs. The pack is gathering strong dogs from all over Japan to fight a deranged bear named Akakabuto (Japanese for "red helmet") and his minions. The story begins from the point of view of the humans, but swings to the dogs afterwards. Takahashi was reportedly inspired by a news article about hunting dogs that had been abandoned by their masters and had begun living as wild animals.

Ginga: Nagareboshi Gin was adapted as a 21-episode anime television series by Toei Animation. In western countries, the anime was released as a set of four VHS tapes, and censored for violent images to make the anime more suitable for younger audiences. This led to the removal of several plot-critical scenes, including all footage from the episodes preceding the series finale as well as the deaths of certain characters. Due to limitations of sound-editing at the time this resulted in the background music of certain scenes to be lost.

The anime has been dubbed in Korean, Thai,[1] Finnish, Hungarian, Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish. In 2003, the uncensored and non-dubbed version of the anime was released in Finland and Sweden as a 5 DVD box set. A corresponding DVD set was released in Denmark and Norway on October 3, 2006, this version, however, had a brand new Danish dub. The Finnish publisher Punainen jättiläinen is releasing the original 18-volume manga with the first volume published in May 2010.[2] The Ginga: Nagareboshi Gin data book, Ginga Seiken Densetsu Meteor Gin (銀牙聖犬伝説, Meteor Gin) was released in September 2011 and after Ginga: Nagareboshi Gin ends, its sequel, Ginga Legend Weed (銀牙伝説ウィード, Ginga Densetsu Wīdo) started to be published in December 2011.[3]